Thursday, March 5, 2015

FERGUSON DOJ REPORT AND THE BOSTON BOMBING CASES. GUESS WHICH CONSPIRACY THEORY TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE?

This week the DOJ released their long awaited report on the Ferguson police department which many in the black community feared would be a repeat of the one that exonerated Darren Wilson. At the same time, the trial for the still living brother in the Boston Bombing has begun as conspiracy theories from what I would guess a mostly white group continues to deny it ever happened. Not shockingly, black people were right and the DOJ agreed with them that the Ferguson police department is indeed acting racist. In the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev however, his defense is not in some impossible conspiracy notion (one that would have required dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people to keep their mouths shut forever about it) but that his brother radicalized him and he was brainwashed. This is the "I don't want the lethal injection" defense."

There were no crisis actors here. Those were real body parts strewn about and real lives lost and to suggest anything otherwise here, just like the idiotic Newtown shooting conspiracy, is delusional. There are real conspiracies happening right now like the off book prison site in Chicago being used by the police to interrogate suspects or the fact that the TPP will usher in a new age of total world fascism. Those are conspiracies worth looking into. This isn't.

The evidence against Tsarnaev is damning, including a confession written in his own blood. Ask yourself, if you were really innocent, wouldn't you do your best to prove that instead of merely asking to not get the death penalty? I'd rather be facing the needle than have to live behind bars for the next few generations. The worst part about all of this, the suspect was in college, had friends, and prospects but threw it all away for his loser older brother who was never going to amount to anything. Religion here was everything I despise about it when it makes otherwise reasonable people into monsters as all religions, not just Islam, can do. We certainly do not look fondly on the Westboro Baptist idiots even though they call themselves religious. However, if they ever started blowing stuff up, I have a feeling they wouldn't last too long afterward when an angry, armed crowd comes for them. Where is that in the Muslim world? And why does America have to be the one to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to radicals like ISIS? Jordan and Saudi Arabia have armies. Feel free to use them guys.

On the flip side we have the Ferguson police department who it turns out are actually racist after all. Who knew? Oh that's right, everyone who was black in that community. While the Mike Brown case was NOT racist and that thug deserved what he got, it opened a raw wound in the town that has yet to heal and exposed the police for actually being as racist as they were accused.

Now some of the stats say that black people are more likely to be arrested in the area over other races. That in and of itself is not exactly racist as FBI statistics show that black people, especially those under the age of 24, are more likely to commit crimes than other races. But, the rest of the report show a consistent racial bias that is horrifying.

Here's one case that is not only racist but highly illegal as debtor's prisons were outlawed by the Supreme Court years ago. This is from Newsweek:

We spoke, for example, with an African-American woman who has a still-pending case stemming from 2007, when, on a single occasion, she parked her car illegally. She received two citations and a $151 fine, plus fees. The woman, who experienced financial difficulties and periods of homelessness over several years, was charged with seven Failure to Appear offenses for missing court dates or fine payments on her parking tickets between 2007 and 2010. For each Failure to Appear, the court issued an arrest warrant and imposed new fines and fees. From 2007 to 2014, the woman was arrested twice, spent six days in jail, and paid $550 to the court for the events stemming from this single instance of illegal parking. Court records show that she twice attempted to make partial payments of $25 and $50, but the court returned those payments, refusing to accept anything less than payment in full. One of those payments was later accepted, but only after the court’s letter rejecting payment by money order was returned as undeliverable. This woman is now making regular payments on the fine. As of December 2014, over seven years later, despite initially owing a $151 fine and having already paid $550, she still owed $541.The DoJ alleges Ferguson police frequently dispensed with justice, instead policing with the goal of generating profit for the municipality through fines and fees. For example, they enacted a "traffic enforcement initiative" with the sole stated goal of generating revenue.
This is happening to lots of people countrywide, mostly Hispanic and black, although the occasional white, poor person also can get grabbed up in this nonsense. Much like news, police are not supposed to be there to generate profit and when they do, their original purpose becomes diluted. This should be something more people are really pissed at, but aren't.

And then there is this gem:

For example, in July 2013 police encountered an African-American man in a parking lot while on their way to arrest someone else at an apartment building. Police knew that the encountered man was not the person they had come to arrest. Nonetheless, without even reasonable suspicion, they handcuffed the man, placed him in the back of a patrol car, and ran his record. It turned out he was the intended arrestee’s landlord. The landlord went on to help the police enter the person’s unit to effect the arrest, but he later filed a complaint alleging racial discrimination and unlawful detention. Ignoring the central fact that they had handcuffed a man and put him in a police car despite having no reason to believe he had done anything wrong, a sergeant vigorously defended FPD’s actions, characterizing the detention as “minimal” and pointing out that the car was air conditioned. Even temporary detention, however, constitutes a deprivation of liberty and must be justified under the Fourth Amendment. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 809-10 (1996).
Just because someone is black, doesn't make them a criminal. That's racist. But wait there's more:

As with its pattern of unconstitutional stops, FPD routinely makes arrests without probable cause. Frequently, officers arrest people for conduct that plainly does not meet the elements of the cited offense. For example, in November 2013, an officer approached five African-American young people listening to music in a car. Claiming to have smelled marijuana, the officer placed them under arrest for disorderly conduct based on their “gathering in a group for the purposes of committing illegal activity.” The young people were detained and charged—some taken to jail, others delivered to their parents—despite the officer finding no marijuana, even after conducting an inventory search of the car. Similarly, in February 2012, an officer wrote an arrest notification ticket for Peace Disturbance for “loud music” coming from a car. The arrest ticket appears unlawful as the officer did not assert, and there is no other indication, that a third party was disturbed by the music—an element of the offense. See Ferguson Mun. Code § 29-82 (prohibiting certain conduct that “unreasonably and knowingly disturbs or alarms another person or persons”). Nonetheless, a supervisor approved it. These warrantless arrests violated the Fourth Amendment because they were not based on probable cause. See Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164, 173 (2008).

Any cop who "smells" pot and finds none after a search should be immediately suspended for two weeks without pay. If you search a car, you better be damned sure something is in there. Still more? Oh yes:

For example, in the summer of 2012, an officer detained a 32-year-old African-American man who was sitting in his car cooling off after playing basketball. The officer arguably had grounds to stop and question the man, since his windows appeared more deeply tinted than permitted under Ferguson’s code. Without cause, the officer went on to accuse the man of being a pedophile, prohibit the man from using his cell phone, order the man out of his car for a pat-down despite having no reason to believe he was armed, and ask to search his car. When the man refused, citing his constitutional rights, the officer reportedly pointed a gun at his head, and arrested him. The officer charged the man with eight different counts, including making a false declaration for initially providing the short form of his first name (e.g., “Mike” instead of “Michael”) and an address that, although legitimate, differed from the one on his license. The officer also charged the man both with having an expired operator’s license, and with having no operator’s license in possession. The man told us he lost his job as a contractor with the federal government as a result of the charges.

These are just a handful of the allegations that demonstrate a police force out of control. Here's how bad they are:

We found additional examples of FPD officers behaving in public in a manner that reflects poorly on FPD and law enforcement more generally. In November 2010, an officer was arrested for DUI by an Illinois police officer who found his car crashed in a ditch off the highway. Earlier that night he and his squad mates—including his sergeant—were thrown out of a bar for bullying a customer. The officer received a thirty-day suspension for the DUI. Neither the sergeant nor any officers was disciplined for their behavior in the bar. In September 2012, an officer stood by eating a sandwich while a fight broke out at an annual street festival. After finally getting involved to break up the fight, he publically [sic] berated and cursed at his squad mates, screamed and cursed at the two female street vendors who were fighting, and pepper-sprayed officer received a written reprimand.

And people wonder why a lot of us don't trust the police force, regardless of race. I am whiter than white and I have had some horrific encounters with the cops. A lot of these guys are just dicks. I used to live next door to an ex-cop who used to beat his wife on a regular basis. He was a peach.

But the point of this is black people have a point that there is racism still in our society. Some of the blame has to be directed back at them for their refusal to improve their own conditions by accepting that education is not "acting white," and the War on Drugs is worse than slavery. Make yourselves better guys. I know plenty of black people, some of whom are even ex-drug dealers, who have gone straight and bettered their lives and they did it by educating themselves and not segregating themselves in ghettos. Yes, racism still exists, especially in police departments. But black people have the power the change things if they start figuring out that poor white people and poor black people outnumber rich people of any race and only then will things get better.